I bought an Atwater Kent type E3 speaker and the cord is in very bad shape. One of the conductors is cloth covered rubber wire and the other conductor is just rubber. The rubber wire is now mostly un-insulated. Some time ago someone took the speaker apart and removed the outer cloth inside the speaker and taped up the rubber wire. They used friction tape which is now rock hard. I suppose it must have been shorting to the frame despite the cloth outer insulation.

Anyway, does anyone know where I can get a replacement cord? I assume that it would have to be reproduction wire. I looked at telephone cord but telephone cord is a lighter gauge than the cord on the speaker. Reproduction power cord is rather too heavy.

I will try oldradiosrus tomorrow when they open up. If they to not have any I will try jackpine. I see that jackpine uses tinsel wire. The wire that came with the speaker is 24 gauge stranded. I am sure that tinsel would work fine, but it is not needed to be authentic.

I will probably temporarily put in some other wire and put the speaker back together to see how well it works. The driver is still in it's rubberized bag, which is not very rubbery any more. I will not take that apart unless I find that I have to. Hopefully the magnet will not have lost strength. I find that the rubberized edge of the cone is also not very rubbery. I don't know if that matters or not.

Tinsel cord for a speaker allows the cord to kind of "flop" like a shoe lace rather than have some rigidity. Tinsel cord can carry some 5-10ma but cannot get wet... B+

Single tinsel cable is also great for an external loop for the same reason... Wires to a loop need to be separated.

Cannot vouch for new manufacture of tinsel cord, if braider carrier spring tension is too strong, braid over tinsel will be very rigid and finished cable won't be floppy... A re-seller may not have control over this parameter...

I called the Antique Radio Store and he said to send an email with my address and he would get back to me with a price that includes shipping. I am then to mail him a check. I sent the email but have not heard back yet.

I put it back together with the original cord shortened and the bare wire carefully positioned so as to not touch anything. The speaker sounds better than I expected and is slightly louder than a more modern speaker paired with an output transformer from an AA5 radio. That tells me that the magnet is still strong. I wonder what would cause the magnet to loose strength. I see from other posts that that does happen.

The rear grill cloth is very thin around the edges and is coming loose at the edges. I am thinking about replacing it but I doubt that I can get anything that looks exactly the same. But then it is on the back so not so visible. The front grill cloth is a different design and is in fairly good shape.

Well, no response to the email that I sent on Saturday. The store hours are listed as Saturday 9 AM to 4 PM PST. Monday and Wednesday 5 PM to 7 PM PST. I called abut a half hour after he opened on Saturday and sent the email about 10 minutes later. I would not expect my email to be caught in a spam filter. The subject that I used was "Radio Speaker Cord". I suppose that I will wait a little longer before I try jackpine, but not much.

Well no luck getting anyone to respond. After waiting 5 days for a response from the Antique Radio Store, i sent an email to jackpine. I carefully read his how to order page and made sure that the email I sent had all of the requested information. The web page said to allow 2 days for a response. But it is now 8 days later.

I suppose that I could use the old wire and just be very careful about the bare wire. Or I could get a telephone line cord. The problems with telephone line cord are the extra wire , the use of tinsel wire and the wrong terminations on the ends. But if I bought a cord from jackpine, it would come with tinsel wire. I could just cut off the third wire and change the termination on one end.

5th image down, IMG_6427.JPG, look to the right, there is a hank of cord that looks like tinsel cord with a double yellow tracer. Another cord looks like it could be tinsel as well...

PM Kirk, He may cut a deal just for the cord.

I assume you know how to put phone tips on tinsel cord...

There is also a fellow in PA that has a couple of braiders and I know he has made loop antenna wire and headphone cord. He has a source for tinsel wire core. He used to offer the radio products on his web site but now it appears to be just his flagship American Flyer products. I also suggest contacting him.

The original is a brown cord, It may be what they call dark brown. It is also stranded wire, not tinsel. But that is probably not important. It is a little over 8 feet long. I do have the original ends that I could put on a new wire.

I recall restoring an A-K drum type speaker, did find the remnants of stranded wire, I wondered why A-K chose stranded over tinsel? Tinsel lays like an old rope so would never appear like a hank on top or to the side of the radio...

Chas

_________________First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."Gandhi"

Well, I called the Antique Radio Store and he said that he did not remember getting my email. He said that he does have one cord left. So I sent the email again using my normal gmail agent and then a second time using the mailto link from his web page. I will give it a little while and see what happens.

While waiting around trying to get a cord, I decided I needed to replace the rear grill cloth. The front grill cloth is in good shape. Here is the sellers picture of the back.

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I removed a small sample of the grill cloth from the inside of the speaker where it was not much faded. The way the cloth is mounted leaves some extra cloth inside the speaker. I bought some cloth that is sort of somewhat like it. Here is what I bought.

The new cord arrived. So I got busy and replaced the rear grill cloth so that I could put the speaker together and wrap this up.

Following is a photo of a section of the old grill cloth that was protected inside the speaker (on the left) and a piece of the new grill cloth. I am assuming that the piece of old grill cloth is close to what it looked like new.

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Here is a photo of the inside of the speaker with the new grill cloth in place. I was able to remove the old cloth and keep the rubber retainers intact. The rubber is rock hard and very brittle. I did crack one as I was trying to get it out without first removing the driver unit. I glued it back together. I put some Pliobond glue around the edge of each opening. I gave it a minute to set up a little and then pressed the cloth into the sticky glue. I then placed the rubber retainer over the cloth to finish putting the cloth into place. The cloth was not quite tight after being installed. So I wet the cloth with water and let it dry. That tightened it up.

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Here is the back of the speaker with the new grill cloth installed.

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Here is what the ends of the new cord look like. Note the cloth tail on each end. Perhaps that could be tied to something to act as a strain relief. The spade lugs are crimp on lugs with insulation piercing projections. I was worried that there might be a poor connection if tinsel wire was used. But each lead measures 1.2 ohms, so I think that everything is OK.

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Here is the inside of the speaker with the cord installed. I ran the cord up along the right hand side and over the top as mentioned in some of the documentation mentioned earlier in this thread.

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When I got the speaker the old cord was not run up and over. But then someone had the speaker apart and, as mentioned earlier, had taped up the old cord. Perhaps it was originally run up and over and had shorted out to the metal frame. Here is a photo of the section of the old cord that was inside the speaker.

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The speaker is now put back together. The only thing missing is the screws that hold the front on. I will have to get some screws and paint them. The speaker came without the screws installed.I am not going to repaint the speaker. I may get some wax and wax it. I noticed that the scuffed sections of the paint look much better when they are wet. I think that wax would have much the same effect.

I find that I am tempted to replace the front grill cloth. The front cloth is in fairly good condition. There is one place where a 1/2 inch section of one thread is missing. When I look at the cloth under the Atwater Kent logo, I see that the cloth there is a little more gold in color then it is everywhere else. But only a little. It is certainly not anywhere near as gold as the original rear cloth is. But I think that the speaker would look good If I replaced the front cloth with the same cloth I used in the back. On the other hand I expect that it is now looks fairly close to what it looked like new. Right now I have sort of decided to not replace it.

It is interesting that they used different types of cloth on the front and back.

Also interesting: When I look at photos of type E3 speakers on Ebay, I see that the front grill cloth is generally in good condition but the rear cloth is often in bad condition.